Albert is a gifted college student with a bright future, but there’s one big problem. He may get kicked out of school first.

He gets bored easily in class. He’s constantly distracted. And when he does pay attention, he’s often challenging the professors – to their embarrassment and frustration.

“How am I supposed to find answers if I don’t ask?” he asks one of them during a heated post-class exchange.

Still, there are plenty of professors who see his potential. One of them says Albert “may be the brightest student I’ve taught.”

As the world soon will discover, Albert also is one of the brightest minds we’ve ever seen.

National Geographic’s Genius premieres tonight (April 25), following the private life of Albert Einstein, from his days as a student who skipped class to his time as a professor whose lectures captivated large audiences.

It is the network’s first scripted series and is based on Walter Isaacson’s book, “Einstein: His Life and Universe.”

I screened the first two episodes in the 10-part series, and it’s safe to say I’m wanting to watch more of it.

Brian Bird has had a hand in more than 25 movies and television shows over the past three decades – including Touched by an Angel and When Calls the Heart – but his latest project, The Case For Christ, ranks near the top in his book.

Bird was screenwriter for the film, which opens this weekend and follows the story of Lee Strobel’s transformation in the early 1980s from atheist to Christian apologist.

“In my 30 years of doing this work, this is the most significant movie of my career in terms of kingdom impact,” he said. “And I think the results on-screen bear that out – not because I’m such a great screenwriter, but we had a great team on this.”

Bird was executive producer and wrote the screenplay for the 2015 movie Captive, is executive producer of the ongoing Hallmark TV series When Calls the Heart, and was a producer of the hit show Touched by an Angel from 1999-2003.

His faith and his extensive experience with family-friendly content is one reason Strobel asked him to write the screenplay for The Case For Christ (PG).

The persecution of religious and ethnic minorities has tragically become common in some parts of the world, and an upcoming movie serves to remind us that the battle against prejudice is far from new.

The Promise (PG-13) opens in theaters April 21, spotlighting a time during the 1910s when the Ottoman Empire turned against its own people and killed an estimated 1.5 million Armenian Christians in what became known as the Armenian Genocide.

Although it was one of the worst atrocities in human history, few people in America know about it. It is sometimes called the “forgotten genocide. It took place during World War I.

The Promise stars Golden Globe Award-winner Oscar Isaac as Michael Boghosian, a medical student who returns to his village in Turkey in 1914 with the goal of bringing modern medicine to the people. There he meets Chris Myers (played by Academy Award-winner Christian Bale) and Ana (Charlotte le Bon), an Armenian artist from Paris.

The two men love Ana, but those interests are put aside when the Ottoman Empire turns against some of its own people. Watch the trailer below.

The Promise is rated PG-13 for thematic material including war atrocities, violence and disturbing images, and for some sexuality.

More than a decade after helping spark the movie-filtering craze, ClearPlay appears to be the last company standing.

ClearPlay launched its first DVD player in 2004 and then added a streaming service in 2014 before an upstart company – VidAngel – took a chunk of its business by offering streaming movies for only $1. But when Hollywood studios successfully sued VidAngel last year in a copyright/license case and a judge forced VidAngel to stop streaming movies, ClearPlay was left as the only remaining company in the U.S. offering families a way to skip violence, nudity and coarse language in movies watched at home. (VidAngel is appealing.)

ClearPlay offers two services: 1) DVD and Blu-ray players that allow families to watch clean versions of PG-, PG-13- and R-rated movies, and, 2) a streaming service that works on a laptop or desktop through Google Play.

Jarman would not provide additional details but did indicate that ClearPlay could be offering a new streaming service as soon as later this year.

1 Comment

Streaming is awesome. Netflix movies cleaned up of the thrash you do want to see or hear cool. How do you really get to take advantage of that? Awesome how do I stream Netflix movies using you service?